JUNE 1, 1916 



A. I. Root 



OUR HOMES 



Editor 



Love ye your enemies ; bless them lliat curse you ; 

 do good to them that hate you, and pray for them 

 which despitefully use you, and persecute you. — 

 Matt. 5:44. 



Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they 

 do. — LUK15 23:34. 



Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin 

 of the world. — .John 1:29. 



If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; 

 and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink ; for 

 thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the 

 Lord shall reward thee. — Peov. 25:21, 22; Rom. 

 12:20. 



In our issue for July 1, 1915, I inserted 

 a olippino- from the Sundaij-school Times, 

 header! "Getting- Even." that little clip- 

 ping has been of so much importance to a 

 sinful world that I am sure our friends will 

 excuse me if I give it once moi^e right here : 



GETTING EVEN. 



To get even with one who has wronged us is to 

 get down as low as he is. The more outrageous his 

 injustice, the lower we shall have to go if we insist 

 upon getting even with him. So " getting even " 

 always leaves us worse off than we were before. If 

 ever one man A>'as TTufnirly treated by another, it 

 was David, at the hands of jealous, unworthy, in- 

 furiated Saul. But when David's chance to get 

 even came, he preferred to stay on the heights. To 

 " revenge " ourselves is to return the sort of thin^ 

 that was given to us. It is as tho, having been 

 cheated by counterfeit money, we wait for an oppor- 

 tunity to pass some of the conjnterfeit back to the 

 cheat. No matter what we have suffered, we cannot 

 afford to do that; for then we have been injured 

 twice; and the second injury is far worse than the 

 first. There is a better way of getting even with 

 one who, in order to harm us, has descended to a 

 low level. It is to stay above him in God's com- 

 pany, and by love to brins him up to that level. 



My reason for presenting it a second time 

 is because of sometliing that more powerful- 

 ly illustrates the admonition to return good 

 for evil than anything, so far as I can re- 

 call, that has ever come to my attention. It 

 is also a clipping from the Sun day -school 

 Times in i-egard to a great missionary, and 

 reads as follows : 



What a great, burly, bewhiskered silent man he 

 is 1 He will weigh over two hundred and fifty 

 pounds. Once he and his wife were put in the 

 stocks and beaten with the Russian scourge. When 

 the beating was over he was unconscious and his 

 wife was dead. He inquired from what section the 

 Cossacks had come who had beaten him and murder- 

 ed his wife, and he journeyed to their section; that 

 was five years ago, and he has since baptized eleven 

 hundred of them. And they were converted, too, 

 and gloriously so; for each one of these more than 

 eleven hundred have put their property and lives in 

 jeopardy by professing faith in Christ and by being 

 baptized in hi.s name. Is not this a present-day 

 example of the grace of God that came by the Lord 

 Jesus Christ 1 — Baptist World, Louisville, Ky. 



There you liave it, friends. If the above 

 is not "getting even" with a vengeance, 

 then I do not know. It is really too bad 



that the Baptist World did not give the 

 name of this saintlike missionary. He was 

 not only beaten, like God's veteran apostle 

 Paul (and probably left for dead), but his 

 poor wife was killed outright. We have 

 been told the American Indian never for- 

 gets an injury. Well, suppose this mission- 

 ary, after he recovered, had spent five years 

 of his life in killing Cossacks ; and suppose 

 he had succeeded in killing, say, eleven hun- 

 dred. I am quite sure the great wide world 

 would have smiled when it heard of it, and 

 said, '"He pretty well balanced the account." 

 But the poor fellow had different ideas of 

 revenge. He first inquired in regard to 

 what section of the Cossacks had done this 

 great injury. Then deliberately, quietly, 

 and prayerfully, he set about getting his 

 revenge — that is, getting what might be 

 called revenge. But his ideas of revenge 

 were along the line of the beautiful texts I 

 have quoted — " Do good to them that hate 

 you; bless them that curse you, and pray 

 for them that despitefully use you." We 

 have lieard about heaping coals of fire on 

 one's head ; and our mothers and teachers 

 have explained to us that the "coals of fire" 

 represent good deeds. Probably those vei'y 

 Cossacks that committed that atrocious 

 crime were ignorant, like our poor brothers 

 in Mexico, for instance. They did not un- 

 derstand this missionary. They thought that 

 lie and his good wife were enemies. Quiet- 

 ly, but witli a strong determination in his 

 heart to win them to Christ, he went to 

 work, and, probably to his great surprise, 

 he found these poor people ready to receive 

 God's precious word ; and in only five years 

 he baptized eleven hundred. We are not 

 told that he succeeded in laying up treas- 

 ures on earth ; but, oh dear me ! what a 

 " heap " of treasure he laid up for him- 

 self "in heaven" ! Eleven hundred precious 

 souls singing praises and thanksgiving to 

 him for having led them out of heathen 

 darkness into the light of the gospel! 



The above has been added to our little 

 tract about the defeat of injustice, etc. ; and 

 may Cod speed the message. Let me di- 

 gress a little : 



A good lot of people, both men and 

 women, Avhen they are getting old like my- 

 self (past threescore and ten), are temi)ted 

 at times to think their work is done — that 

 the great responsibilities of ilie present age 

 will have to rest on younger shoulders. Did 

 you ever feel that wa^', my aged friend ? 

 Very likely you have. Well, up in Michigan 

 there is a lady (I think she said she is over 



